Peter Askew runs DudeRanch.com, which promotes dude ranches as a vacation destination to the traveling public. He’s a self-hosted WordPress user and a fan of open-source software.
— Paul, one of the VaultPress Safekeepers

My primary WordPress site is DudeRanch.com, which chronicles dude ranch vacation destinations across the USA and Canada. Most folks aren’t familiar with a dude ranch vacation, so we enjoy helping educate everyone on all the options a ranch has to offer (in addition to horseback riding).

My initial exposure to WordPress took several years as I traveled the long road into website development. I’m originally a Southern Studies/History graduate of Ole Miss (Hotty Toddy), so my initial background in computer science and website administration was extremely limited. I was exposed to the web during the dotcom boom of the late 90’s, and during that time I developed a deep passion for the industry. Over the next few years, I managed to teach myself HTML & CSS, and, from there, I was exposed to WordPress as a blog and CMS platform. I was initially attracted to WordPress because of its open source nature and its ability to manage and maintain a website within an easy to understand interface.

Customization and ease of use are what I value most about WordPress. I also highly value the WordPress development team as they continue to evolve and update WordPress for the growing needs of website administrators.

After I built the site, my main focus shifted to backup and security. With over six months of development time and thousands of hours devoted to maintenance and administration, I took a proactive step to ensure the site’s safety. Once I discovered VaultPress, and its ability to provide realtime backups, downloadable archives, and disaster recovery, matched with the fact that it’s operated & administered by the Automattic team, the decision to join was easy. The installation was a breeze, and I’ve now been a happy client for almost six months! :)

Check out DudeRanch.com here. If you’re a VaultPress customer and you’d like to be featured in one of our future VaultPress stories, please drop us a line. Thanks Pete!